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Practice makes perfect visual presentations: organizing and preparing your case for trial will be easier if you follow these 10 rules for integrating technology into your visual presentations.

Article Excerpt
Let's face it: The slam-dunk case never goes to trial. The only cases that do are the ones with problems.

To succeed at trial, you must anticipate and overcome those problems before you reach the courtroom. Using technology to organize, prepare, and try your case will contribute to your success, but you must be committed to practicing with it before your courtroom presentation and using it throughout the trial.

Adding technology to your case presentation at the last minute can have embarrassing or even disastrous consequences. For instance, the attorney who makes an opening statement that incorporates a slide presentation that he or she has not rehearsed will look stilted, confused, or ineffective. The attorney who has not sought a ruling about the propriety of a particular slide may be stopped mid-presentation with an unfavorable ruling and have to take the slide down. The attorney who does not call an exhibit by its name on the exhibit list will be left standing while the paralegal or trial technician tries to figure out which exhibit to display, telegraphing the point to the jury that the attorney is not organized.

The bottom line is that the longer you wait to prepare your presentation, the more likely you will make a mistake that inhibits your ability to put evidence in front of jurors. Why does this happen? Part of the reason is tunnel vision: You can become so focused on your thorough understanding of the case that you forget about the learning curve you went through to grasp the subtle facts and nuances of the case. Those subtleties and nuances will be lost on a jury unless you take the time to consider how to convey them convincingly.

To that end, the more time you spend brainstorming about how to present information to a jury, the better your case presentation will be, and the better your chances of connecting with jurors and securing a just recovery for your client. Follow these 10 tried and true rules to keep you on track.

1. The earlier you start preparing, the better. Start to think about the visual trial before you file the complaint. In their book Rules of the Road, trial lawyers Rick Friedman and Patrick Malone suggest drafting jury instructions before drafting a complaint. Jurors can use these instructions as a road map to a fair recovery. (1)

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Think about what your jurors will read and see during your opening statement, and draft the jury instructions, or rules, with the idea that your jurors will write them down or that they will at least internalize them as you speak. The rules should reflect the core concepts that your jurors must understand to render a verdict in your client's favor. They should become rhetorical devices that can be woven into the story of your case.

Once you have begun drafting the rules, put them onto PowerPoint slides. You can...